Digital video cameras have become increasingly popular and are commonly used by professionals and consumers alike to produce videotaped movies or, simply “videos.” Digital video cameras differ from conventional movie cameras by storing information on cartridges of electronic tape, rather than on photographic film reels. Images are converted and stored as a continuous electronic signal streamed onto videotapes for storage, editing and viewing.
The number and types of users of video camera technology has continued to grow for several reasons. Recording videos in digital form originally required significant amounts of storage capacity. However, recent advances in providing increased storage capacity at lower costs have made digital video camera technology available to a wider user base. Further, videos are more flexible than film and can be exchanged electronically, including over digital data transmission means, such as the Internet. Finally, de facto standardized video formats allow device-independent playback, even using commonly available Web-browsers.
The availability of standardized data formats and the ease of dissemination can facilitate the creation and distribution of illicit copies. Conventional digital video cameras, including recorders and players, lack fundamental security measures to protect against the unauthorized use and compromise of private video content and to provide trustworthy authentication of authorship. Several recent examples of video compromise and theft underscore the need for effective security for private video content. In one notorious case, a private video taken of a celebrity couple was stolen and posted on the Internet, resulting in embarrassment and harm to their reputations. In other instances, stolen video content has been reproduced and sold without authorization, thereby resulting in lost profits.
Similarly, digital video content can be easily fabricated or altered. Conventional digital video cameras, including recorders and players, likewise lack means for authenticating the identity of the author. Authentication is particularly important in such fields as law enforcement where the veracity of data and identity of authorship play critical roles.
In the prior art, copy guard protections have long been used to protect commercially produced videos. However, only rudimentary security measures using basic password protection exist for protecting private video content. Typically, a password is applied to the recorded digital data file and playback is disabled, absent the correct entry of the password. This form of password protection, though, protects the media as a whole and not the individual parts or frames. Moreover, the password is generally applied after recording is complete and not as part of the recording or playback processes. Thus, the video content is at risk of compromise until the password is secured. For these reasons, password security offers only marginal protection and is easily compromised.
As well, videotape equipment, including cameras, players, and the like, have been commercially available for years. Except as described above, these devices generally lack security features and the necessary expansion capabilities to introduce aftermarket accessories to provide such security. Consequently, video content generated and played by these “legacy” devices remains unprotected and subject to compromise.
Therefore, there is a need for an approach to provide security and authentication to private legacy digital video production equipment to protect content during playback and to authenticate an author. Preferably, such an approach would incorporate device-independent security transparently employed during both recordation and playback processes using a cryptographic security scheme.
There is a further need for an approach to providing security and authentication incorporated into legacy digital video media. Preferably, such an approach would selectively provide on-the-fly symmetric or asymmetric (or both) key encryption and decryption and would further provide trustworthy authentication of recorded data as an integral part of the data recordation and playback processes.